Visiting Philosopher Susan Haack Defends Science—Within Reason

Susan Haack, one of the most prominent philosophers in America, will arrive for a two-day visit on campus beginning March 11. Professor Haack will deliver an original talk, free and open to the public, titled “Not Till It’s Over: Reflections on the End of Science,” based on a chapter of her forthcoming book, Defending Science—Within Reason.

Currently the Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami, Professor Haack was educated at Oxford and Cambridge. She is the author of Deviant Logic (Cambridge, 1974), Philosophy of Logic (Cam-
bridge, 1978), Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology (Blackwell, 1993), Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic: Beyond the Formalism (Chicago, 1996), and Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays (Chicago, 1998) as well as of numerous articles on the philosophy of logic and language, epistemology and metaphysics, pragmatism, the philosophy of science, and feminism.

Within the field of philosophy, Professor Haack is most noted for her work in epistemology. According to a review in The Times Literary Supplement, her book Evidence and Inquiry “brilliantly steers a middle course between what Haack calls the Old Deferentialists and the New Cynics, between cognitive optimists who claim too much for human knowledge and the many species of cognitive pessimists who claim far too little.”

Haack has also written for a broader audience: in her book Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays, she criticizes a number of the shibboleths of postmodernist academic culture, addressing matters ranging from feminism to multiculturalism to affirmative action.

A reception will follow in the Humanities Center in Trinity 100. Earlier that day, Haack will lead a two-hour symposium on the same subject in the Humanities Center in Trinity 126 from noon until 2 pm During much of the rest of her stay, she will meet with students and attend a number of classes in philosophy and intellectual history.

Professor Haack’s visit is co-sponsored by the Humanities Center, as part of its year-long themes—the Question of Truth in the Humanities and the Role of the Public Intellectual—and by the Committee on Arts and Lectures, which provided a generous grant.

For more information, please call Laird Easton at x4284.}

Laird Easton, director,
Humanities Center